ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the case for rationality in reproductive decision-making. Students of human reproduction have increasingly come to recognize the importance of decision and choice in the reproductive process. The chapter shows clear evidence that alternative variables predict reproductive behavior. The assumptions of rationality were first formally incorporated into the explanation of reproductive decision-making by microeconomists. These microeconomists conceptualized reproductive decision-making as a form of household behavior which, along with the production and consumption of other goods and services, would be governed by the economics of consumer choice. The value of children is seen as only one determinant of the reproductive decision. Overall, the value-of-children variables do seem to predict some reproductive attitudes or intentions fairly well. A. R. Davidson and J. J. Jaccard have argued that there are consequences of both contraception and reproduction which affect persons' behavioral beliefs and, subsequently, influence their contraceptive and reproductive intentions and behaviors.
